Pragmatism, realism and moralism

Philosophy & Social Criticism, 2023

Political realists have devoted much effort to clarifying the methodological specificity of realist theorising and defending its consistency as an approach to political reasoning. Yet the question of how to justify the realist approach has not received the same attention. In this paper, I offer a prudential justification of political realism. To do so, I first characterise realism as antimoralism. I then outline three possible arguments for the realist approach by availing myself of recent inquiries into the metatheoretical basis of realism: the metaethical, the ethical, and the prudential arguments. I explain that the prudential argument offers the most solid basis for political realism because it relies on the least controversial premises. Still, I delve into the metaethical and ethical arguments for two reasons: the prudential argument takes advantage of the theses defended by the rival arguments; and elaborating the other arguments shows the comparative strengths of the prudential argument.

Moral Philosophy and Politics, 2020

Political judgments usually combine a normative principle or intuition with an appreciation of empirical facts regarding the achievability of different options and their potential consequences. The interesting question dividing partisans of political idealism and realism is whether these kinds of consideration should be integrated into the normative principles themselves or considered apart. At first sight, if a theorist is concerned with guiding political judgments, non-ideal or realist theorizing (directly integrating such considerations) can seem more attractive. In this paper, however, I argue that ideal theorizing might be considered valuable even by theorists moved by a pragmatic concern (guiding political judgments) because it is less exposed to conservatism. I nonetheless contend that the aim to guide action in the world as it is should not be abandoned. Therefore, I outline a four-step method for proceeding from abstract moral principles to concrete political judgments and apply it to a test case.

This introduction to a special issue on trends in contemporary pragmatist political theory lays out the key shape and questions of that debate. It also provides quick summaries of the contributions of the special issue.

Philosophy in Review, 2000

This book is an introduction to pragmatism, but also an explication of Rescher's own version of a realistic pragmatic philosophy. Rescher's realistic pragmatism is designed to dispel a number of traditional objections that figure prominently in the history of pragmatism from Peirce to the present day. Rescher contrasts a pragmatism of the 'left'-associated with James, Schiller, Dewey, Rorty-with a pragmatism of the 'right'-represented by Peirce and himself. Rescher carefully lays out a methodological version of pragmatism that is marked by metaphysical realism, objectivity, rationality, a hard-nosed theory of truth, but tempered with methodological flexibility and a healthy epistemological fallibilism. Rescher's distinction between truthconditions and use-conditions in his discussion of language and logic presents an intriguing strategy for cleaning up a pragmatist theory of truth and meaning. Rescher applies equal attention to presenting a pragmatic moral theory that is objective, principled, rational, sensible, capable of accommodating the highest human values, while shunning the conventional, pluralistic, crass-materialistic, anything-goes socio-cultural relativism traditionally associated with pragmatists of the left. All in all, Rescher forcefully addresses well-known criticisms leveled against earlier forms of pragmatism, presenting an alternative view that fares well as a response to recalcitrant problems of modernist philosophy without succumbing to tenuous laxities of post-modernism. This book is to be recommended for its effective portrayal of a hardnosed objectivist, realist pragmatism. Unfortunately the book will disappoint readers familiar with classical pragmatist texts.

European Journal of Political Theory

This article surveys recent work in pragmatism and political theory. In doing so, it shows both how recent work on pragmatism has secured the view that at its core is a set of arguments about the character of democracyalthough the character of those arguments is open to debate and reimaginationand how pragmatist arguments have been reinterpreted and deployed to address contemporary concerns and approaches. This charts a terrain of live disagreements rather than settled opinion.

Res Publica

The realist revival in political philosophy is profoundly shaped by its opposition to a certain contemporary approach to the subject taken by luminaries like John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, Robert Nozick, and G. A. Cohen. As a result, much of the recent work thereon has focused much more on what realism is, how it contrasts with Rawlsian moralism or ‘ethics first’ approaches, and on discussing the nature and membership of the realist tradition – though there are a handful of important exceptions to this. This has left many wondering what contemporary realist political philosophy would look like in practice. Two recent edited collections help to answer that question: Politics Recovered: Realist Thought in Theory and Practice, edited by Matt Sleat; and Realism in Political Theory, edited by Rahul Sagar and Andrew Sabl. This review article discusses three themes of wider interest to political philosophy which that appear in both: debates about the nature of politics and realism; the implications of realism for democratic philosophy; and addressing concerns about status quo bias.

A common trait of all realistic political theories is the rejection of a conception of political theory as applied moral philosophy and an attempt to preserve some form of distinctively political thinking. Yet the reasons for favouring such an account of political theory can vary, a point that has often been overlooked in recent discussions by realism's friends and critics alike. While a picture of realism as first-and-foremost an attempt to develop a more practical political theory which does not reduce morality to politics is often cited, in this paper we present an alternative understanding in which the motivation to embrace realism is grounded in a set of critiques of or attitudes towards moral philosophy which then feed into a series of political positions. Political realism, in this account, is driven by a set of philosophical concerns about the nature of ethics and the place of ethical thinking in our lives. We argue that this impulse is precisely what motivated Bernard Williams and Raymond Geuss to their versions of distinctively realist political thought. This is important to emphasise, we argue, as it demonstrates that realism does not set politics against ethics (a misunderstanding typically endorsed by realism's critics) but is rather an attempt to philosophise about politics without relying on understandings of morality which we have little reason to endorse.

Philosophy Compass, 2014

This paper provides a critical overview of the realist current in contemporary political philosophy. We define political realism on the basis of its attempt to give varying degrees of autonomy to politics as a sphere of human activity, in large part through its exploration of the sources of normativity appropriate for the political, and so distinguish sharply between political realism and non-ideal theory. We then identify and discuss four key arguments advanced by political realists: from ideology, from the relationship of ethics to politics, from the priority of legitimacy over justice, and from the nature of political judgment. Next, we ask to what extent realism is a methodological approach as opposed to a substantive political position, and so discuss the relationship between realism and a few such positions. We close by pointing out the links between contemporary realism and the realist strand that runs through much of the history of Western political thought.

Studies in Social and Political Thought, 2018

This paper aims to advocate a Williamsian approach to political realism and contends that contemporary realist political theory is built on an ‘a-theoretical core’ that the paper will call ‘political realism’ in the broader sense (for a very different approach to Williams, see Hall, 2013). The central tenet of this thesis is that contemporary realist political theory fundamentally differs from mainstream political theory not only in its political outlook, but also in its views about the tasks and prospects of theorizing. In other words, ‘political realism’ imposes severe constraints on theorizing in a realist key and makes contemporary realist political theory especially vulnerable to criticisms coming from mainstream political theory. This paper contends, however, that the inherent limitedness of contemporary realist political theory is a fair price that is worth paying for a more realistic understanding of politics. The argument of the paper is built on the Williamsian assumption that mainstream political theory is ultimately a sort of ‘applied morality’ and that the fundamental problem with mainstream political theory as ‘applied morality’ is not so much its strong commitment to pre-political moral principles as its being fundamentally shaped by an ethical theory.

Contemporary Pragmatism, 2019

The question of what political consequences, if any, follow from American pragmatism is nearly as old as pragmatism itself. David Rondel's Pragmatist Egalitarianism breathes new life into this old debate. Rondel outlines a distinctively pluralistic and problem-oriented approach to political philosophy that claims to "reconcile and mediates" the false dichotomies and interminable debates marking philosophical discourses of egalitarian justice. This article identifies two competing visions of the political consequences of Rondel's egalitarian brand of pragmatism: one Rortyan and deflationary, another Deweyan and reconstructive. Rondel's reconstructive argument shows how pragmatism's democratic radicalism pushes beyond the liberal consensus of contemporary theories of justice and towards a more robust conception of democratic socialism, yet the full implications of this position are cut short by the book's competing deflationary mode.